US judge orders separated families be reunited
LOS ANGELES: A judge has ordered that migrant families separated at the border with Mexico under President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy be reunited within 30 days.
For children under 5, reunification must take place within two weeks of the order issued on Tuesday by US District judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.
He made the sternly-worded decision in response to a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of a 7year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.
The judge also issued an injunction against any more family separations, which was part of a policy under which anyone crossing the border illegally is detained and referred for criminal prosecution.
Federal authorities have 10 days to allow parents to call their children if they are not already in touch with them, the judge said.
Trump last week signed an executive order halting his government’s practice of taking children away from parents who crossed the border without papers, even to seek asylum.
Many are destitute people fleeing gang violence and other turmoil in Central America.
It was a rare retreat for Trump, who has made fighting immigration, both illegal and legal, one of the most sacred mantras of his fiercely US-centred policy agenda. But the order made no specific provisions for families already separated under the policy, which sparked heated criticism in America and worldwide as inhumane and even a form of child abuse.
More than 2,000 children taken from their families remain under the care of federal authorities.
Some are just toddlers, or even infants.
ACLU argued that the administration had no real plan for reuniting families.
Every night small children “are crying themselves to sleep wondering if they will ever see their parents again”, said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.
The policy of detaining parents who cross illegally with children has been suspended, with authorities saying they do not have space for all the families coming over from Mexico.
Sabraw was scathing in his criticism of the Trump policy of taking children away from their parents.
“The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government’s own making,” Sabraw wrote in the 24-page ruling.
“They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution,” the judge added.
The attorneys-general of 18 mainly Democratic states also filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the Trump family separation policy.
“Keeping children separated from their parents is inhumane, unconscionable and illegal, and we’re filing suit to stop it,” wrote Attorney-General Barbara Underwood of New York.